The mentally ill population of the state’s prisons has increased from five percent in 1971 to 20 percent in 2007, according to the report. Meanwhile, Alabama is "among the states spending the least on public psychiatric treatment programs.”

According to the report, “The Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails: A State Survey,” 483 of 2,413 of the inmates at Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham are mentally ill. In comparison, the state’s largest mental hospital, Bryce Hospital, has 268 beds.

The addition of the mentally ill inmates into the state’s overcrowded prisons has created a “prescription for disaster,” leading to lawsuits, according to the report.